Hello and welcome to Money Talks, a special extra podcast from Slate Money, where we chat with

brilliant and interesting people. I'm Emily Peck. I'm a correspondent at Axios and

co-host of Slate Money. And I'm here today with

Jane Marie. She is a Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist whose amazing podcast, The Dream,

went really deep on maybe the most American of businesses of all time, which is the multi-level

marketing industry. Some people might call it

pyramid schemes or direct marketing, companies like Avon, Mary Kay, Lula Roe, Amway, companies that sell

the American Dream, but typically turn quickly into a nightmare. Jane's book is called Selling the Dream, the

billion dollar industry bankrupting Americans, and in it she goes even deeper on MLMs. Jane, welcome

to Money Talks. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm so excited you're here. After the

break, I want to talk about everything. What MLMs actually are, how they came to be.

Why aren't they legal? Are you legally required to be interested in MLMs? If you come from Michigan,

Shana Roth, our producer, is from Michigan and was, I think, unusually interested in this topic.

Fantastic.

That's why I bring it up.

And I want to talk a little bit about even maybe Donald Trump.

That's all coming up on Slate Money Talks.

Okay, so I feel like I always knew what multi-level marketing was, but not until I really listened to the dream and read your book.

Did I really kind of think about how mathematically impossible MLMs are?

But before we get into the math, can you maybe just explain what exactly makes a business a multi-level marketing company?

Well, can I ask you, what did you think they were?

I guess I thought they were, I don't know, stuff you sell out of your home, you have parties, and you don't wind up making any money.

...